Latest drug control plan still a hard-line approach

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy released its 2013 National Drug Control Strategy this week.

Although billed as a "21st-century approach" to drugs, it maintains a hard-line approach to this issue, despite the soft rhetoric.

Claims that it is to be a "science-driven" and "evidence-based" plan, government would have us believe our policy is now one based as a public health issue and not a law enforcement issue, while maintaining the overwhelming part of the budget (58 percent) for law enforcement and interdiction efforts. That is not giving way to a more treatment- and prevention-based plan.

Furthermore, when treatment is attached to mandated punitive criminal justice elements, this new outlook is little more than a sweet-smelling lock 'em up program; that is, more of the same old drug war.

There is no other health issue in which people are thrown in jail if they don't get better. We don't treat alcoholics like this.

Peter Christopher

Middletown

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Latest drug control plan still a hard-line approach

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy released its 2013 National Drug Control Strategy this week.

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